Without any access to the simple pleasures of life, i.e. internet, skype, blogging, I’ve had enough time to do other things, mainly work. The past week has brought along a bit more hours, days with average 10 hours of work, but have managed to make a 12h day aswell. To be quite fair with you, it was not a whole 12 hours of work, but as the law insists you have to have a half-an-hour break every 5 hours (read: lunch) and as mine just passed while driving around and spraying the fields, I added those two half-an-hour breaks on top of the actual hours. That’s the way it works here. And if you were irish, you’d add another 30-60 minutes to get more money (read: lying). So as said, I’ve had my working days filled with driving the tractor and doing spraying. Itself it’s not a hard work, but on the other hand you cannot really relax either as the fields might be quite rough – you are being thrown around on your seat like nothing, also have to keep an eye on whatever obstacles, from time to time kangaroos, rabbits, birds, mice (well, mice are always there and everywhere), foxes, but also these little fellows –
hedgehogs. As the tractor has a modern radio installed I am more than happy to use the other simple pleasures of life – BYO (read: bring your own). Usually, as I have mentioned it’s for bringing your own drinks to restaurants, in my case BYO music. Luckily the amount of music I can copy onto the USB memory sticks is about 3900 songs, that might keep me entertained for a little while.
Meanwhile 2 weekends have passed, quite ordinary, not too much going on but still have had some entertainment. Last weekend (13-15.May) started off with a shorter working day, as the irish guys needed to go to Murray Bridge to sort out their issues with their car, caused by their arrogance, ignorance and I’m-the-centre-of-the-world mentality. By today (22.May) it is still unsorted as they need their passports, which got stolen while in Sydney and now new ones are again waiting in Sydney which they do not feel like getting asap. So if nothing changes, they’ll be fined. Fine by me, this might reduce their level of arrogance.
So were was I – Murray Bridge – so far it relates to shopping and I did a heavy shopping this time, resulting in 250AUD! But that more or less keeps me covered for 2 weeks so no worries. J As we had both Saturday and Sunday also off, there was not too much to do, yet fortunately one english guy, Andy likes to do some racing, it was worth while having a peek on local highlight – speedway racing at Waikerie Speedway. It’s a dirt covered round track and the aim is, as in all forms of motorsports, suprise-suprise, not to crash and to finish first. J The event was of some
national importance, so there were a number of cars involved in various classes, starting from small engines with very young drivers and finishing with really powerful V8 dirtcars going sideways pretty much the whole
race. Andy wasn’t racing any of those however. As they say, save the best for last, so to dot the i of the evening there was a figure 8 racing, which included some destruction derby driving but not entirely. The idea was to finish, but you were allowed to do some crashing aswell, in order to overtake or to mess around with competitors a bit. But not TOO much because then you’d get penalties! And to make it more interesting, they’ve added 2 small jumps on the course, taking those might give some extra points or smth. Don’t know the rules though. It was quite interesting to watch, especially those guys with V8 cars going sideways and overtaking each other at the same time, but I’d prefer some more corners on the course and as the night was long (the whole event lasted about 5 hours) and cold (you could actually see your breath) then I probably wouldn’t invest going there again. Except when I could race myself J
This weekend began somehow differently. One evening I was told that tomorrow we’ll only have a half a day’s work again. I became a bit frustrated with it because I already had had 2 weeks in a row with both Sat & Sun off, but later that day, already half asleep I recalled – it’s Friday and tomorrow is Saturday. So no worries Margus, half day is already filled and that’s good. J Which
left the other half still open. As Pete had a football game that afternoon, Dermot and I set our way to Swan Reach to see BSR Redbacks (Blanchetown & Swan Reach joint team) play Aussie rules footy. It was a nice warm sunny day when you could actually wear only shorts and thongs (read: flipflops), a rare thing here. And there cannot be footy without a beer, or two, maybe three, sometimes four. J I don’t quite get the game yet but it’s a bit like American football, only it’s a men’s game without any protective plasticy shields or helmets. It’s a rough
game. J BSR team won a second weekend in a row with 144 points against opponents’ 53, if I’m not mistaken.
On both weekends I noticed a similarity during the events – it is a social event where everybody goes, whole families, they bring their own barbie (read: BBQ) or if possible (and early enough) use the public barbies. And when I say everybody, I refer to a lot of people from the nearby (read: 100km) communities. To make it nice and comfy for the spectators – they can park their cars pretty much the whole way around the stadium, so there’s no need to even step out of it. J Next step to so called american society.
P.S. Remember the Queensland (QLD) floods earlier this year and cyclone Yasi’s devastation in northern QLD?! Well it has had it’s affect. The Queenslanders are known as Banana Benders and that’s for a reason. Namely QLD provides the majority of bananas for the whole nation and also exports a lot of them. Due to the environmental disasters guess what has happened – YES correct, the increase of prices. And I kid you not – the price used to be around 2 AUD per kg, now it’s somewhere 13-14 AUD per kg!! 1kg of bananas is about 5-7 pieces. You do the maths.
P.P.S It is these days publicly on all media channels advertized that due to strong local currency situation it is reasonable, whoever can afford it, to go travelling. On the other hand it is a tricky position for local products to be sold abroad because the cost has increased, not only due to currency situation but also the general increase in production costs.
And that's what happens when you light up a dump and bring some beers :)
wintertime coming up so their fur adjusts to the colours of the surroundings. I imagined them to be less grey and more light brown :)
backpackers working in the upper shed (we have an upper and lower shed, the upper one is where the washing and packing of potatoes is done and lower is where the cooling rooms for storage are and where the machinery is located), but I do not have any contact with those people just because I have no business up there at this moment. As I said before, I’ll manage but it would be more interesting to have some more people around. Fortunately, as soon as there will be some rain, we’ll have our weeks full of work and then I really will not have any spare time, just work which means money which means I can relax and travel later.